Yahoo acquires Xoopit

Search engine and e-mail provider buys startup for somewhere around $20 million

After being founded in 2006, Xoopit is going to be part of Yahoo.

Sunnyvale-based Yahoo is buying Xoopit for an undisclosed amount. The Wall Street Journal pegged the sale price at $20 million.

"We've been dedicating a significant amount of resources toward the Yahoo mail application platform since it launched in December 2008," said Bijan Mirashi, co-founder and CEO of Xoopit. "We saw a unique business opportunity to be the leader in Web mail applications. Yahoo's merger offer allowed us to fully realize our vision to make mail more useful, social and fun."  

San Francisco-based Xoopit is known mostly for its Firefox plug-in that organizes your Gmail inbox from something less text, into more of a visual experience.

The plug-in allows users to browse photos and videos from YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly and Kodak all within Gmail.  It also enhances search to have more of a Facebook-like feel, turning items and photos within emails into thumbnails laid out across the top of the users browser.

"As we successfully proved out the system by duck-taping ourselves into Gmail, the industry began to wake up about the opportunity to evolve," said Mirashi.

"With the integration of Xoopit’s platform technology and capabilities, the task of sending photos via email will be as easy as it should be and sharing photo albums with friends and family members will also be a cinch. You’ll be able to share your pictures among a group of friends or family like never before – combining pictures from numerous sources into a single album for a private group to view," wrote Bryan Lamkin, SVP of Yahoo applications, in a blog post.

Xoopit's product for Yahoo Mail is called MyPhoto's. It's currently only available in a public beta to those who sign up on Xoopit's Web site. 

Xoopit's MyPhoto's product on Yahoo Mail will be globally rolled out sometime in the fourth quarter, said Mirashi, who along with his team of nine at Xoopit, plans on staying with Yahoo for some time.

Just a couple months ago, Marashi came over to Vator’s studio to be featured on our show “FundRazor.” He spoke on the virtues of raising less.

"Sometimes having too much money too soon can be distracting for the business b/c it could lead entrepreneurs to make decisions to try things that they wouldn't try when they have to just have limited funds," explained Marashi.  "When you have limited funds you have to make very, very hard, painful trade offs.  It's those hard painful trade-offs that force you into something specific and valuable."

Xoopit raised $1.5 million in seed funding from angel investors, and then went on to raise $5 million in Series A funding from Foundation Capital and Accel Partners.